McEnroe the maverick is now making waves in the commentary box

'FIVE minutes to on-air," the floor manager says, and the tension in the BBC's Wimbledon studio ratchets up another notch. "Any sign of John?" the producer asks no one in particular, trying to keep his voice calm. "Any hint of John?" he adds. Outside the windows, beyond the reflections of the lights, the ghostly mass of Court No 1 looms in the dusk.

By Andrew Baker

12:00AM BST 08 Jul 2000

'FIVE minutes to on-air," the floor manager says, and the tension in the BBC's Wimbledon studio ratchets up another notch. "Any sign of John?" the producer asks no one in particular, trying to keep his voice calm. "Any hint of John?" he adds. Outside the windows, beyond the reflections of the lights, the ghostly mass of Court No 1 looms in the dusk.

"Three minutes to on-air," the floor manager says. The make-up woman emerges from her little hutch by the studio door. "Where's John McEnroe?" she innocently inquires. No one responds. She shrugs. "I'll do him in situ," she says, moving towards the empty chair intended for the American.

She has "done" Pam Shriver, who is sitting behind the table next to John Inverdale. The latter, in his trademark open-neck shirt, is chatting to the director through his clip-on microphone like an actor performing an avant-garde soliloquy. Shriver interrupts him to inquire about her fellow pundit. "What's his record?" she hisses. "About a minute," Inverdale smiles.

"One minute to on-air," the floor manager says. "He's on his way," a voice calls from outside the studio door, and John McEnroe strolls swiftly in, plonks himself down in his chair, pops in his earpiece and waves away the make-up woman. "I got some of that," he says. "I already got some of that at NBC."

"Going on air," the floor manager says. Inverdale grins at the camera. "Welcome to Today at Wimbledon," he says. "We've got semi-final action for you and John's here to keep Pam in check."

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Well, what did you expect? That McEnroe the broadcaster should be significantly different from McEnroe the player? A conformist? A safety-first merchant? Get out of here. There is still an edge about everything John McEnroe does, an unpredictability which means that his colleagues and his fans can never take anything for granted. He will show up on time - just - but that is about all that you can count on. It makes for fun viewing, and a nervous producer.

The British public love the results. The letters columns of respectable newspapers, which a generation ago were full of suggestions that the ill-mannered brat should be defaulted, or deported, or decapitated, are now publishing paeans of praise to the sober-suited pundit. Hacks who deplored his ultra-competitive antics now salute a consummate fellow professional. And the BBC, who have been frantic for a sporting success story, breathe a colossal corporate sigh of relief.

"The phrase that keeps cropping up in the e-mails from viewers," according to Dave Gordon, BBC Sport's executive editor and the man behind the Wimbledon coverage, "is 'a breath of fresh air'. You could almost say that John has dragged our coverage, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century."

McEnroe does not look like a broadcasting radical. Nor does he look like the other former tennis stars who wander around Wimbledon in their tracksuits waiting for people to recognise them. He does not need the recognition. McEnroe scuttles from studio to court and back again in a smart suit, white shirt and properly knotted tie. Under the baseball cap, the greying hair is neatly cut. The earring and the sinister shades are the only concessions to personality. He looks like a maverick investment banker.

The contrast with the McEnroe who bestrode the show courts here like a bad-tempered colossus is exquisite. When, in the early 1980s, McEnroe broke the stranglehold that Bjorn Borg had exerted on the men's singles at Wimbledon, he did so in odd socks with a bush of hair barely restrained by a sweatband.

He did so with a barely contained rage against those he considered his intellectual or physical inferiors. He swore at linesmen and photographers, assaulted floral displays, marmalised rackets. When an umpire objected to being called "a ******* French faggot", McEnroe challenged him to a fight.

The crowds, particularly the crowds at Wimbledon, where proper behaviour had previously been as obligatory as all-white clothing, were scandalised and thrilled in roughly equal measure. The same people who longed for him to be thrown out of the tournament also yearned for him to win it.

And they adored the way he played tennis: the trademark, rocking preamble to a vicious serve; the volleys that were not so much hit as dismissed; his agility and determination; the bloody-minded will to win that was all of a piece with the rows and recriminations.

These days, on the seniors' tour, McEnroe keeps up the same standard of antics and almost the same standard of play. He will tell you that his serve is 10mph or so quicker with a modern racket than with the old Dunlop, but that it is also less accurate, less subtle. The arguments and protests also lack a certain something: sincerity, perhaps. There is an element of self-parody that was never present in the serious youth.

This is probably why audiences love the televisual Mac. The British are famously fond of people with a sense of the absurd and the ability to be self-mocking; Americans are notoriously lacking in these attributes. Yet the man who coined the phrase "You cannot be serious" (which is now in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations) no longer has to be serious himself.

In the commentary box he combines wisdom and insight with one or two of the phrases that he helped to make famous. During Lleyton Hewitt's first-round exit, there was a disputed line-call. McEnroe, at the microphone, said: "I know somebody said it in the past, but chalk flew up."

He has earned the right to be cheeky about the players. Arnaud Clement, he reckoned, was playing so lazily against Tim Henman that he would shortly ask for a chair and play sitting down. When a fellow commentator suggested that Steffi Graf had shown Andre Agassi a new forehand in training which he had disliked, McEnroe leered: "That doesn't matter because I think he likes a few of the other things she's shown him as well."

You might expect this kind of banter to go on non-stop in the Today at Wimbledon studio between video clips of the day's action, but you would be mistaken. Entertainers don't waste their best lines backstage. Inverdale mentions that he'd been filling in time on Radio 5 Live wondering who McEnroe might pick, as US Davis Cup captain, to play the doubles in the tie against Spain. "Oh yeah?" McEnroe grinned, determined not to be drawn. "Who'd ya come up with?"

On one topic, though, he loosened up a little. Venus Williams was talking on tape about how younger siblings always got what they wanted and the elders just had to put up with it. "Hey, that's how I was," McEnroe recalled. "My kid brother Patrick always got the ice-cream. That was OK, though. I got the title."

McEnroe had a few words of caution for Vladimir Voltchkov, the first qualifier to reach the semi-finals of the men's singles at Wimbledon since Mac himself faced Jimmy Connors in 1977. "Take a lot of deep breaths," he counselled, "and remember anything can happen. That's what sport is all about." Maybe Voltchkov wasn't watching. Maybe he forgot the breathing. But hey, McEnroe lost to Connors.

"Off air," the floor manager said. McEnroe stood up, unplugged his earpiece, signed a book and a cap for a production assistant, and disappeared into the darkness.